by Diana Palmer
He was still shocked by her unexpected behavior when he’d shouted at her. He felt guilty. Something had happened to her, something bad. She was afraid not only of loud voices, but she seemed to expect violence to accompany them.
“You didn’t see the cow that was charging you,” he said after a minute. “I wasn’t sure I could cut her off in time. I lost my temper. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t expect the apology. It changed the stubborn, hard set of her face into something less antagonistic. She shifted from one foot to the other. “I didn’t even see her. I should have realized that the calf was just separated from her. I thought it was hurt.”
He smiled. It was a genuine smile, not the sarcastic one of their first meeting. “So you knit and run cattle.”
She glowered at him. “And wear cut-rate dresses. Yes. I don’t like dressing up.”
He shrugged. “Neither do I, honestly,” he said. “I’m more at home with cattle than people.”
She smiled shyly. “Me, too. Cattle are usually nicer than people.”
He chuckled. “Is that a dig at me?”
She flushed. “Not really. I was thinking about...other people.”
He tilted her hat up just a little so that her whole face was on view. “Someone yelled at you and hit you,” he said abruptly, and saw her wince and bite her lower lip. “A man.”
She backed away a step. “It’s ancient history. I need to talk to Bart.”
He wanted to pursue the conversation. She troubled him. “Okay,” he said instead.
She turned and went back to Sand, patting his neck gently as she took the reins and jumped up into the saddle with an ease that wasn’t lost on her companion.
“He’s beautiful,” he said, indicating her mount.
She smiled. “His owner died and he was mourning. They had him at the sale barn. He saw me and trotted right over to the barrier and lowered his head against mine. I knew he belonged to me. My cousin gave him to me as a birthday present.”
“Your cousin?”
She nodded. “Rogan Michaels. He owns a cattle station in Australia with Jake McGuire, who has a ranch outside Catelow, too.” She laughed softly. “Their ranches make mine and Bart’s look like hobby farms.”
He knew Rogan Michaels. They both owned shares in an oil venture in Oklahoma. “Is he around?” he asked idly.
“No. Cousin Rogan has itchy feet,” she said on a sigh. “He’s back in Australia. He hates snow. His cattle station—well, his and Mr. McGuire’s—borders on desert. No snow.”
“I like snow,” he commented, his eyes sliding over the white pastures. “Where I live, it’s like desert most of the year. We get snow occasionally. Never enough to bother us.”
“Do you work on a ranch there?” she asked.
He nodded, his Stetson slanted over one eye. “I work with purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle on a ranch in West Texas.”
She glanced at him. “Bart has another cousin who’s sheriff of our county,” she said.
“That would be Cody Banks,” he said. “He has a cousin down in San Antonio who’s a Texas Ranger.”
“My great-grandfather was a deputy U.S. Marshal,” she said. “And my father used to be a policeman in Catelow, when I was a little girl.” Her face tautened.
He frowned. “Is he still alive?”
She laughed shortly. “Who knows? I haven’t seen him since I was nine. He ran off with another woman. I’m not sure my mother even noticed that he was gone.”
She was as tense as a taut rope. “You don’t like your mother,” he commented.
“My mother died the year I graduated from high school.” It was a flat statement.
“Of some illness?”
“You might call it that,” she said quietly. “Her boyfriend was drunk. He ran them into a telephone pole. They died instantly.”
Boyfriend. He was getting a cold feeling about her life, her past. Drunk. Did the boyfriend drink? Was he violent when he drank? It might explain her behavior earlier. He felt guilty that he’d brought it up.
“My father married a model,” he said as they rode toward Bart’s house. “She only wanted what he had—well, it was a small ranch,” he lied, “and she thought he was rich. She managed to alienate his eldest son, my brother, and we didn’t speak for years. In the meantime, Dad found her out and divorced her.” He laughed. “He played the field. We had women all over the place.”
That explained his cavalier attitude toward women, which reminded her of the happy divorcée he’d gone home with the night before. She felt less comfortable with him.
“He’s married now,” he added. “A former newspaper reporter tripped over him and he fell head over heels in love. He moved to Vermont with her, to be near her family. Her brother recently died of terminal cancer and she wanted to be near her relatives while they got over the grief.”
“That’s sad,” she said. “Nobody in my family ever had cancer. My grandfather died in the rodeo arena, gored by a bull. My other grandfather bought and sold livestock and died of old age. You just never know.”
“True.”
They were at the gate that led to Bart’s house, and as they reached it, they saw Bart coming toward it on foot, smiling.
“I know that smile,” Cort chuckled. “Sold a bull, did you?”
“Sold two,” Bart replied with a grin. “I can afford to pay taxes!”
“Me, too,” Mina said, smiling. “Well, if we can do a production sale together the end of the month,” she added as Bart opened the gate and she and Cort rode through. “I can’t afford to do it by myself. Besides,” she added with a sigh, “I’m too shy of people to actually invite anybody out to look at the calves.”
“Speaking of which,” Cort interrupted, “she almost got gored out in the pasture by an angry mama when she bent over to check a downed calf.”
“Oh good Lord,” Bart burst out. “Are you okay?” he asked quickly, his eyes scanning her.
“I’m fine. Your cousin really knows how to ride a cutting horse,” she added with grudging praise. “He saved me. I thought the calf was injured and I stopped to check him.”
“Thanks, but don’t risk your life,” he added. “You know I don’t run polled cattle here.”
She grimaced. “I knew that. I just wasn’t thinking. We’d just loaded up Old Charlie for Bill to take to his place. He was a terror of a bull, but I already miss him.”
“You can always go over to Bill’s and visit when you want to,” Bart said.
She nodded.
“Old Charlie?” Cort asked.
They dismounted. “He’s my oldest bull,” she told him. “He injured one of my young bulls so badly that he had to be put down. He just got another one—with lesser injuries that will heal. I couldn’t keep him and I didn’t want to sell him to somebody who might have the same bad luck. Bill didn’t have a bull. So I gave him Charlie.”
He was watching her with real interest. She improved on closer acquaintance. He smiled slowly. A woman who knew cattle, who could ride a horse. He’d never expected this feisty little woman to do more than knit.
Bart intercepted that look and ground his teeth together. Cort was a rounder. Mina was a recluse, with good reason not to trust men. It was an accident looking for a place to happen, but he didn’t know how to stop it. Mina didn’t like Cort, but she’d admired the way he cut off the mother cow before it could gore her.
Something had happened besides that. He knew it from the way they both looked. He’d get it out of Cort later, he decided.
“Want to come in and have lunch with us?” Bart asked.
She forgot all about the tuna salad invitation, because she really didn’t want to sit and try to eat with Cort, and she’d have to invite him as well, out of politeness. “Thanks,” she said, “but I’ve got things to do at the house. I just wanted to ask you a
bout the production sale.”
“I’ll get something together and text it to you later. That okay?”
She nodded. “I’ll have four yearlings out of Michaels’ Red Diamond,” she said, “and six out of Michaels’ Charles Rex.”
“Charlie’s calves?” Bart asked.
She smiled. “Four of them are Charlie’s. Now that Bill has a few purebred Black Angus, he can sell calves along with us next year, maybe.”
He chuckled. “Knowing Bill, he’ll probably give them all names and put collars on them and buy them toys. I doubt he’ll sell a single one.”
She laughed. “Probably.”
“Would that be Bill McAllister, who works for you?” Cort asked his cousin.
“Yes, it would. Mina and I share him, part-time. Neither of us can really afford full-time help.”
“Cousin Rogan says I have to have a full-time ranch hand,” Mina replied with resignation. “So I need you to recommend somebody. I’m not having some strange man on my place,” she added firmly.
“I know that,” Bart said gently. “I’ll find you somebody. If I can’t, I’ll ask Jake McGuire or John Callister for a recommendation.”
“That would be kind of you. I know how to do most everything on a ranch, but I don’t have time to do it every day.” She glowered. “I hate having to have somebody hanging around all day.”
“I’ll make sure it’s somebody who won’t interrupt you.” He pursed his lips. “As you’ll recall, I almost got hit face-first with a boot when I did it that time.” He remembered having interrupted her in the middle of a scene she was writing.
“I didn’t know it was you,” she said, defending herself. “I thought it was Kit, and he knows how to duck.” She shook her head. “He’s like a force of nature. You can’t make him understand that he has to be quiet—he just keeps right on talking until you answer him.”
Cort didn’t understand anything he was hearing. What would somebody interrupt that caused the woman to throw boots at him?
“I’ll get home,” she said with a smile. “But I think I’ll take the front road home, just in case your mama cow’s still around in the pasture.”
He laughed. “Okay. I’ll get the gate for you.”
Cort studied her quietly while she mounted. “Be careful. We have horses that bolt when cars go by them on the highway.”
“Sand isn’t bothered by anything,” she assured him, smiling as she patted the gelding’s neck. “He’s always calm.”
“Sand?” he asked.
“Well, he’s yellow, isn’t he?” she asked. “Like desert sand.”
Desert. Sand. His face hardened. Thirteen years and it was still yesterday. “Like desert sand,” he said, and turned away.
Her eyes followed him, curious about his abrupt change of expression, but Bart called to her. She turned Sand and rode toward the gate.
“I’ll text you,” he repeated.
She grinned. “I’ll be waiting. Thanks, Bart. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. We have to stick together or we’ll both go broke.”
“And isn’t that the truth?” she chuckled. “See you!”
CHAPTER FOUR
BART HAD SENT one of his part-timers into Catelow to pick up a bucket of chicken and biscuits. He could cook, but it had been a long day and he wanted something he didn’t have to produce. He and Cort sat at the table and ate it.
“What happened out in the pasture?” Bart asked as he sipped coffee.
Cort finished the last of his chicken and picked up his coffee cup. “She was inspecting the calf when its mother charged her. She didn’t hear it or see it. God, I never thought I’d get to her in time! I barely made it at all. I cut off the mother cow and yelled at her.” He grimaced. “I’ve never seen a woman react like that to a loud voice.”
“You don’t know about Mina’s past,” Bart said quietly. “Her mother loved men. Plural. She was a rich man’s mistress for a time. She blackmailed him, threatened to tell his wife. Well, his wife found out and she had all the money. So after that, Mina’s mother took up with any man who was willing to pay the bills. They came and went, and there were a lot of them.”
Cort sipped coffee, his face solemn. “I gather that one of them hit her.”
Bart nodded. “Yes. She doesn’t talk about it much, but I think more than one of them did. Another one wanted to do a threesome with her mother, and she hid in the woods all night.”
Cort winced. “My little mother was a saint,” he said softly. “I barely remember her, but Dad talked about her a lot. She loved him so much. There was never another man.”
“Mina’s mother wasn’t like that. The last man she lived with was Henry. He was an alcoholic and when he got drunk enough, he was violent. He beat Mina up, really badly. She called the sheriff, but when the deputy came, her mother lied and said Mina fell down the steps and blamed poor Henry, who’d never lifted a finger to her. The deputy went away without arresting him. Cody Banks, our cousin who’s the sheriff, didn’t believe her mother and he tried to catch Henry in the act. He never did. When Mina was eighteen, Henry and her mother were killed on their way to a bar, in a car wreck. She inherited the ranch, but the memories are pretty bad. She doesn’t date.”
“Now I understand why,” he said. “She’s afraid that a man she got involved with might turn out to be just like her mother’s drunk boyfriend.”
“That’s why.”
Cort was remembering the dream he’d had, of the shadowy woman crying, frightened, saying she’d never trust a man. How odd, he thought. It was almost as though he had some sort of mental link to a woman he didn’t even know.
“All of us around Catelow know about Mina. Her mother was notorious.” He glowered. “There was one boy, when Mina was sixteen. She was crazy about him. He liked her, too. He asked her out and went to the house to pick her up. Her mother was all over him. The next day, she lured the boy to her car after school and seduced him.”
“Oh good God!” Cort said angrily.
“He was too ashamed to face Mina. It got around school, too. So there went her only real taste of romance.” He shook his head. “She’s had a hell of a life.”
“Her mother should have been prosecuted for child abuse. Seducing a teenage boy!” he scoffed.
“She should have been prosecuted for what she did to Mina,” he agreed. “She hated her only child. I never understood why. Neither did Mina. She suffered after her father took off. Years and years of pure hell until her mother finally died.”
“And I thought I had it bad, with my dad’s model.”
Bart’s eyebrows went up. “How so?”
“She hated me. Well, she hated all of us kids. There were four of us. She played up to us, pretended she was crazy about us, until she got Dad to load her up with diamonds and stocks and bonds and marry her. Then the claws came out.” He sighed, remembering. “Cash hated her from the beginning. He saw right through her act. We didn’t, and it alienated him from the family. Cash got the worst of it because he was Dad’s favorite. Actually, I think Cash was supposed to inherit the ranch, but after all the drama and alienation, Cash said he’d never come back to West Texas, even after Dad saw what she really was and divorced her. Garon joined the FBI and lived all over the country. Parker’s up in Montana, with their State Game and Fish. That left me, to inherit Latigo. Dad said that if I didn’t learn to ranch, the whole place would go on the auction block. So I learned how to ranch.”
Bart was surprised. “You didn’t want to?”
Cort’s smile was world-weary. “I wanted to be a mercenary, like Cash. He lived a life more exciting than anyone else I knew. It sounded romantic. You know, a hired gun, like in the old cowboy movies.” His smile faded. “Only it’s not like that. I joined the Army because I felt patriotic. It sounded noble, you know—defend the country, go overseas to Iraq, fi
ght insurgents.” He leaned back in his chair. “I learned what Cash already knew. That taking a life isn’t as simple as it looks on film. That seeing your friends, who’ve been with you since basic, blown into bits by an IED, having one die in midsentence right beside you from a sniper attack, those things are really sanitized even in the most realistic movies. In real life,” he added coldly, “they’re not romantic. When I got out of the service, I came home and threw myself into ranching heart and soul. I understood why Cash was so alone, why he never mixed with us, with anybody. When Garon opened doors for us with him, I went to Jacobsville to visit. We talked, a lot.” He sipped more coffee. “I understood him then. So did Garon, who’d spent years with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. All of us had killed and very nearly been killed. It’s a very exclusive club. Not one any sane person would want to belong to,” he added.
Bart nodded. “I was in Afghanistan,” he said after a minute. “I spent my whole tour of duty sleeping on the ground with a rock for a pillow, dodging snipers, hiding out from insurgents who were stalking us. When I first got home, I was so nervous that I’d jump out of my skin if a car backfired.”
Cort cocked his head. “I didn’t know you’d gone overseas.”
“We didn’t talk much until the past two years,” he reminded his cousin.
“That’s true. Imagine running into each other at a cattle convention and realizing we were related,” Cort chuckled. “That was one for the books. We were like brothers by the time we went home. Think of all the years we missed being friends, because we never knew one another.”
“You came up to see Cody a time or two, but that was while I was overseas,” Bart said.
“Yes, it was. Poor Cody,” he added quietly. “He’s still not over his wife dying.”
“She was a good doctor, they say,” Bart replied. “I guess he’ll mourn her for the rest of his life. He doesn’t date anybody. Lives with that dog she gave him the year she died.”
“Well, being alone isn’t so bad,” Cort replied. “I’ve got the ranch all to myself except for rare visits from my brothers. Even Dad was usually away in pursuit of some woman most of the time. It was just me and the cattle.”